Normally it wouldn’t be proper to advocate food fights at our local schools. But there’s a trend at some Gwinnett schools that is worth emulating, especially since these “food fights” aren’t what you might remember from your youth.

The new way of competing over food involves collecting non-perishables for local food pantries. Earlier this month high school students at Mill Creek and Dacula held their second annual “Friday Night Food Fight” — collecting more than 41,000 pounds of food. Now the cluster schools from Grayson and Archer are preparing for a similar competition with the collection scheduled for Oct. 13 when the Tigers host the Rams in a homecoming football game.

The premise is simple: fans attending the game can donate food in red barrels for Archer or green ones for Grayson. Whichever school has the fullest barrels will win, but much like the competition between Mill Creek and Dacula the real winners are the food pantries that will receive the donations.